The little girl on whom all eyes have focused since Luc Besson's The Professional and Ted Demme's Beautiful Girls is all grown up and ready for her white gown, corsage and close-up.

It's also fair to say that healthy - better make that unhealthy - sectors of the male audience have been waiting for her in much the same way that Karl Malden "waited" for Carroll Baker in Baby Doll, doubled up by ungovernable paroxysms of guilt-drenched lust.

Indeed, rereading some of the comments she made after she turned down the title role in Adrian Lyne's Lolita remake ("that movie is gonna be pure sleaze"), it's evident that she was profoundly alert to the likelihood she'd be exploited if she didn't keep her wits about her.

Portman has always been cunningly positioned, securely ensconced in naif-land yet clearly visible to the slavering pervs on the neighbouring island. Many of her earlier roles relied on her combination of teenage alabaster beauty and proto-adult knowingness.

On the one hand, we heard of the golden child of the Long Island suburbs, trilingual, frighteningly bright, quivering with exquisite poise (plus the adorable little ears exactly like the wings on the Rolls-Royce hood-ornament), and all set for the Ivy League.

Then there is what we know of her family's attempts to preserve a sense of childhood innocence while building her Hollywood career in some pretty adult movies - no mean feat and, to judge by the supremely grounded teenager who appeared in interviews, one they pulled off.

Well, now she's 23, but so far the career hasn't been as interesting as one might have hoped. There was the rather stillborn Anywhere But Here, followed by Where The Heart Is, a country song of a movie with a sharp tang under the twang.

But there was also the indignity those scarcely human Star Wars prequels, wherein she laboured under criminally unsympathetic hairdos and makeup. I was inclined to think her too brainy and real for all that Hollywood nonsense, and hence reluctant to take it all too seriously.

But now along come sterling roles in two movies, Zach Braff's sublime Garden State, and Mike Nichols' Closer, which she and Clive Owen walk away with when all eyes are supposedly on Jude Law and Julia Roberts. She may yet choose to become a doctor, as she's often threatened, but for the time being, let's hope she sticks to acting.

Career high: As supersmart 13-year-old Marty in Beautiful Girls. How many guilt-soaked male viewers walked out of that movie wondering if they weren't perverts? I know one for sure.

Career low: Star Wars.

Need to know: Speaks Hebrew, Japanese and French. Longtime friends with Britney Spears. There's a double-date for ya.

The last word: "I'm going to college. I don't care if it ruins my career. I'd rather be smart than a movie star."

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